I found this November report, forgotten among my many tabs, from NewScientist concerning wind speeds to be interesting:
An increase in wind speed in recent years is good news for renewable energy production. Average global wind speed had been dropping since 1978, but this trend has reversed over the past decade.
Zhenzhong Zeng at Princeton University and his colleagues analysed data on wind speed recorded at ground weather stations across North America, Europe and Asia between 1978 and 2017.
The researchers found that from 2010 to 2017, average global wind speed over land increased by 17 per cent – from 3.13 to 3.30 metres per second. Before this, from 1978 to 2010, wind speed had been falling by 0.08 metres per second – or two per cent – every decade. The reversal came as a surprise, says Zeng.
It may be enough to observe that climate change is adding energy to the system, which can then power the wind.
I’ve observed on an occasion or two my discomfort with green energy systems that don’t seem to have been designed with the idea that disturbing an energy landscape may have negative consequences of its own. However, if we’re talking about “excess” winds, the harvesting of the wind may actually result in an environment that more resembles the environment before industry and other human activity began changing it so radically.
